Monday was Memorial Day. The mall was open, but only until 6. There was a big scheduling mess, and the schedule we'd been sent on Sunday was all wrong, and the district manager was going to fix it. We were told to come in at the times scheduled for Monday and that everything else would change. Cue me coming in at 12 like I was scheduled and the DM sending the schedule at 12... which said I was supposed to be in at 9AM. I am not clairvoyant. >:/
In addition: my roommate was picking me up, but had dinner with his father at about the same time. He says he can drive me home, and that we'd have just enough time to stop by the grocery store to pick up food. So I buy ice cream and frozen food, thinking I was about to get a ride. Cue his father calling going "oh, I'm at the restaurant already!" A GOOD 15 MINUTES BEFORE HE SAID HE'D BE THERE. >:/ My roommate couldn't just leave him waiting so he swung by the mall (which is right next to where he was going anyway). I had to leave the ice cream in the work freezer, because it wouldn't survive the trip home. I made him take me out again so I coudl buy an iron and ironing board, and bought more ice cream.
Also, in all this confusion, I managed to post Poll of the Week a whole day early. What?
Tuesday was a day off. It wasn't bad, just a day off.
Wednesday was a huge $2k catering for an organization that had a big event in town all week. This is a yearly thing. Last year, this was when the DM decided to fire the GM that was running the store. The day of the big catering. Yeah. :/ This year, we had the DM, the new GM (this is the third person to fully take over the store in a year), two other guys from other stores in the region, me, and the second-in-command running the show. It actually went pretty well, considering how overbearing the DM gets. Our DM is the kind of person who tells you to do one thing and then gives you 5 different things to do within two minutes. It also didn't help we were trying to close our regular business while the managers were trying to make the pizzas for the event, and on top of attempting to sell the pizza we had on the table, I had to fill cups of ice.
That night, I ended up helping with soda. When the people finally started eating, we had a decent stock of soda already filled, but we couldn't keep up and at one point I didn't have soda at all, and the second I put two cups down, they were instantly snatched up and there were still at least five people waiting. It was a lot of twisting and turning and at one point having my hands soaked in soda.
As you can imagine with a huge event, the store was an absolute mess when we were done. The dishes were stacked a mile high, flour everywhere, the floor sticky from the soda... just really bad. So what does our DM do? Tell the GM and the two extra managers to get the hell out of there, and me, the second-in-command, and the dishwasher to get it all cleaned up. In an hour. >:/ Apparently the GM felt bad about leaving us there but what can you do? We ended up leaving some small dishes we couldn't get washed in time. And still managed to miss some dough pans, apparently.
Thursday, I worked noon to close. I come in at noon and the two guys that were helping out are in the store. Long story short, the girl opening the store was boggled about our soda machine, which apparently some of the parts fell right off and she couldn't reassemble it. Because of this, she didn't have much food. Cue noon rolling around and a bunch of people attending the big event in town coming for food, and she not having near enough. (You would think they'd be sick of pizza after the catering, haha.) It's so bad that the prep girl is serving up front, and she never serves. The guys were only supposed to b ethere to help the machine but had to restock our table before they left. GM was not happy about this. She also came in 30 minutes late due to having to help someone out in the parking lot; their car battery had died, I guess? And she spent a few hours working on next week's schedule. Also, she kept calling me to the back to ask me stuff about scheduling and what was going on and about this and that and it was kind of grating after awhile. Eventually we close and that's that.
Friday I was scheduled another long shift, 9 to 7. We had a huge hour at noon, where I was actually stuck on register, for a change. Which was amazing; if this were any other time I'd been stuck making pizza, and not fast enough. By the end of the shift, though, the GM was really sick with a bad cough and apparently awful sinuses. The girl (same one working Thursday morning) got mad because she had less hours and actually complained in front of both me and the GM about it. Tactless much? And my feet hurt. My shifts have been shorter lately, so I wasn't used to two long ones in a row.
Also, I was supposed to close PotW votes and post the new one... but no one voted this week. Was very bummed about it.
Today, I was supposed to have off. Been looking forward to it all week; I never get Saturdays off, unless I specifically request it, and I don't. Saturdays are the busiest day of the week, because everyone that works in the military* or works a "normal" 9-5 M-F job has it off. It's also when all the cool stuff happens. I was actually halfway debating going out and doing something today, because damnit, I have a Saturday off.
I get a call at 9:45 from the second-in-command manager, telling me the GM is too sick to come in, so I need to cover her noon to close, and she'd work my Sunday shift tomorrow so I could have a day off.
At first, I was very, very cranky. Part of it was probably being halfway woken up by a phone call. Another part was having to work another 9 hour shift for the third day in a row. Another part was having the first Saturday in months taken away from me. Another part was me being angry at myself for being upset because seriously the GM is sick and can't work. And maybe another part of me has just gotten soft because this is seriously the first time I've been called in on a day off in a long time -- and it's rare that I actually get the next day off. Regardless, I was about five seconds from sobbing when I got into work. I got better as the day went on, though. Having two bottles of caffeinated soda probably helped.
The GM had to come in and input the order from Wednesday. Her voice was all but gone. I just feel guilty now for being in a bad mood. :(
And the icing on top of the cake of badness this week: our soda machine uses a carbon dixoide tank (henceforth called the CO2 tank). It's what makes the soda fizzy. When the carbon dioxide runs out, the soda is no longer carbonated, and it becomes the most evil invention of man: flat soda. Well, the CO2 ran out about 6PM tonight. It was just me and the male manager. Neither of us knew how to change the thing. I go back and check out the setup. There's a handy dandy gauge that lets you know how much CO2 is in, and sure enough, it was on empty.
We call the second-in-command about it. She tells us to use this tool on the side. Both of us try and hardly have any luck. Most we get is the manager manages to get it slightly loose and it makes a lot of noise. We don't know why, but that turns out to be my fault, in the end; I opened the top valve on the tank, thinking it'd help us get it off, whiiiich it doesn't. We think the dishwasher might be able to change it and wait until then. He's been working at this store 21 years now; surely he knows! He comes in at 7. Of course, changing the tank is the one thing in the back he doesn't know how to do. So the second-in-command comes in five minutes later. She's all like THIS TANK ISN'T EVEN EMPTY THERE'S STILL STUFF COMING OUT WHEN I SCREW IT OFF. The gauge is reading green because I'd opened the valve, which I'd forgotten about at that point. The GM comes in a few minutes later. By then I'd remembered to tighten the thing. Sure enough, about two minutes after that? Gauge reads empty again. She has it changed in a few minutes. At this point it's like 7:30 and we've been without the soda machine for an hour and a half. D:
Since I closed, I wasn't even home until 10.
